Turtle Man plans to take on Argos

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The crack in the Turtle Man's shell is healing, and he's planning to poke his head out for the next game.

Receiver Milt Stegall went home to Atlanta last night, reasonably confident he'll be ready to play in the Bombers' next game, here against Toronto, Aug. 25.

"That's definitely the plan," Stegall, nursing cracked ribs, said yesterday. "Will that happen? We'll just have to wait and see. They'll evaluate me again when I come back on Friday and Saturday. By the time we play that game, that'll be a month. It usually takes between three and five weeks, but you know I'm superhuman, so I'm able to heal a bit faster than the average man."

Stegall has missed the last two games, and the Bomber offence has been putrid without him.

If he's ready to play against the Argos, he could line up alongside former Toronto receiver Robert Baker, whom the Bombers picked up yesterday.

"I'm able to run and cut and do all that, but their main concern was me taking a hit and causing some more damage," Stegall said. "As far as the pain and discomfort, that's all gone, now."

Still, Stegall says he'll take the doctor's advice on this one.

"This is an injury you can't rush back, because you can cause some further damage that could affect you for the rest of your life."

CRAZY CALL: In one of the strangest calls ever witnessed in the CFL, officials called back a B.C. touchdown and replayed the down Thursday because a whistle was blown in the crowd.

"They have to do that," said Bombers head coach Doug Berry. "The feeling is that if the officials perceive that a play was affected by an inadvertent whistle like that or a whistle from the stands, then the play is a do-over.

"To me, it's an embarrassment to our stadium that they had to do that because it happened in Hamilton and I just couldn't believe that fans would do something like that and I have no use for it."

The Lions were forced to settle for a field goal when the do-over failed.

BAIRD BANISHED: LB Adrian Baird was ejected from Thursday's game for hitting B.C. kicker Paul McCallum out of bounds after he had conceded a safety touch.

"I haven't talked to him yet about it and I'm not going to talk to him because he knows what he did," Berry said. "It's a controllable thing and until he can control that type of behaviour and attitude and reaction, then he's never going to be a great football player. Until he controls that type of thing, he will never achieve what he is capable of achieving."

The disqualification carries an automatic CFL fine and you can bet the Bombers will lighten his wallet as well.

"I don't like to make excuses but I got facemasked and it didn't get called and he (Pierce) got outside and scored a touchdown," Canada fumed. "It's hard enough to contain a quarterback and he got outside, and it just wasn't a very clean play."

"Watching the films, it certainly wasn't all one individual," he said. "Offensively, we can take that blame and put it on every position.

"It was just unbelievable what we did offensively on some plays. So, it certainly is not just the quarterback offensively. You could tell during the game that Mike was composed but he was getting absolutely no help from other people on offence."

The coaching staff decided not to yank Quinn, hoping he could establish some positives for the next outing, Berry said.